"I am very sorry to hear you say so, Tip. Have you come back?"
"Why—yes. But that's not the worst of it."
"Not the worst of it?"
"Don't look so startled, Amy. I've come back in a new way. I'm one of the prisoners now. I owe forty pounds."
For the first time in all those years, she sank under her cares. She cried, with her clasped hands lifted above her head, that it would kill their father if he ever knew it; and fell down at Tip's graceless feet.
It was easier for Tip to bring her to her senses, than for her to bring him to understand what a pitiable thing he had done. But he agreed to help keep it a secret from their father; and Little Dorrit toiled harder than ever, in the hope of one day getting him out again.
Thus passed the life of the Child of the Marshalsea until she became a young woman.
II. HOW THE PRISON GATES WERE OPENED
Among the ladies for whom Little Dorrit sewed by the day was a Mrs. Clennam, a cold, stern person who lived in a cold, stern house. Yet she gave the child plenty of work and paid her fairly well. So Little Dorrit was often to be found in some gloomy corner there, sewing away busily and adding nothing at all to the few far-away sounds of the quiet old rooms.
Mrs. Clennam lived alone, except for a dried-up servant or two, and she herself had lost the use of her limbs. So it is no wonder that the house was gloomy, and that Mrs. Clennam's son Arthur found it so, when he returned from a long visit in India. Arthur Clennam was a young man who had ideas of his own, and who had disappointed his mother by refusing to continue his father's business. They were not in sympathy—which made the house seem all the colder. But he was kind, open-hearted, and impulsive.